Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Gas Chamber Ventilation

In his Belzec book, with a
reference to medical literature (published in 1931) on harmful gases, Mattogno
writes:

Taking into account the density of carbon
monoxide of 0.967 (relative to air), which is practically equal to that of
hydrogen cyanide (0.969), and mindful that killing the victims within 15–30
minutes would have required reaching a lethal concentration of some 5,000 parts
per million (5.7 milligrams/liter) within the gas chambers, it would certainly
have been necessary to ventilate the chambers or to wear an independent
breathing apparatus on entering, but none of the main witnesses ever mentioned
this.[305]

The point by Mattogno is bogus, as many Aktion Reinhard witnesses (whom
Mattogno also quotes in his work) mention the ventilation of the gas chambers. Few,
if any, witnesses mention gas masks, but what would be the purpose if, as those
same witnesses maintain, the exhaust gas in the chambers was ventilated out
naturally before workers entered?

For Treblinka, as
previously pointed out,[306]
several survivors attest to the instalment of vents atop the gas chambers in
order to remove the exhaust gas after a gassing. For Sobibor, Gasmeister
Erich Bauer stated quite clearly:

After the gassing, after about 20 to 30
minutes, the engine was stopped. After the opening of the doors there was still
a wait until the exhaust fumes were removed. Then the corpses were loaded onto
trucks and driven to the pits.[307]

Franz Hödl, who was also present at Sobibor, similarly spoke
of the doors as the agents of ventilation:

The outside walls along the building’s
entire length were trap doors, which would be raised after a gassing. This was
also the method of ventilating the chambers.[308]

Regarding Belzec, Karl Alfred Schluch stated:

After the gas chambers were ventilated, the
Jewish Work Kommando under the leadership of a Kapo and removed the corpses out
of the chamber.[309]

Mattogno oddly quotes
Schluch’s above statement (though only focusing on his description of the
gassed corpses) immediately after criticizing witnesses for failing to account
for necessary ventilation measures (quoted above).

As with Auschwitz-Birkenau, Revisionists put a high emphasis on safety
precautions that Jewish laborers should have been awarded in their functions
during the Nazi exterminations; of course, such an emphasis is certainly
misplaced, as the Nazi staff need not value the life of any Jew. As seen above,
the gas chambers are said to have been ventilated after the gassings, prior to
the removal of the corpses. This would have significantly reduced the concentration
of carbon monoxide gas in their work environment. It should also be kept in
mind that the laborers would not have been completely exposed to the gas, as
they would have quickly entered and exited the chambers when removing the
corpses, shortening their exposure times with the poison, and allowing time for
the remaining CO concentration to ventilate out of the chamber.

***

As shown earlier on in
this chapter, the path to the gas chambers at the Reinhard camps involved much
more than a walk through the “tube” to the buildings; their evolution and
development has never been addressed in the denier oeuvre. This chapter finds
that, despite the unjustifiable obsession that deniers have shown towards the
gas chambers, their arguments are abysmally ignorant of the multitude of
evidence for their existence and operation. Despite mockeries and a few
selected criticisms of witness statements, as Chapter 6 will detail, MGK fail
to adequately and reasonably refute the credibility of the numerous witnesses
(perpetrators, prisoners, and bystanders) for the gassings. Other documents
related to the camps, such as related to fuel deliveries and the plunder of the
victims’ property, substantiate and reinforce the witnesses’ validity. MGK’s
focus on the gas chamber buildings in and of themselves without regard to the
wider body of historic evidence relating to the camps, Nazi policy, or other
realities in occupied Europe, also displays a surprising isolationist and
unprofessional approach to the events.

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